This year’s Oscars aren’t for another week, but this past weekend was a big one for awards. We’ve already posted on the Visual Effects Society awards that were largely handed out to Avatar and Up. But France’s big awards ceremony, the Cesars, went down over the weekend, with Jacques Audiard‘s widely acclaimed A Prophet scoring nine wins. And the American Society of Cinematographers handed out a slightly surprising best of ’09 while the Cinema Audio Society honored sound mixing achievements in ’09. Read More »

Ahead of the release of Michael Haneke‘s Palm D’or winning The White Ribbon this Friday in the UK and on December 30th in the US, we have the exclusive unveiling of a new online scene from the film to tempt you with. Thankfully, the digital encode here has gone a long way in preserving the astonishing shimmer of Christian Berger’s cinematography. You can check out the clip below the break.

Haneke’s film is set in a German village shortly before the outbreak of the first world war where a mysterious set of circumstances lead to ritual punishments that threaten to get completely out of hand. Indeed, Haneke has said his themes are the origins of all forms of terrorism “be it of political or religious nature”. As well as being a Cannes darling, this is the film Germany has put forward as their Best Picture contender for the Oscars next year.

I have a deep admiration for the films of Michael Haneke, but was still slightly surprised when his new film The White Ribbon won the top prize at Cannes this year. (Even with Isabelle Huppert, who’d previously found Cannes success via Haneke, as jury prez.) We’ve seen some clips from the film, and now that it is about to open in Germany, there’s a German-language trailer. You won’t get a lot of plot, but Christian Berger’s gorgeous cinematography is on full display. Read More »